That’s the question the U.S. Travel Association is asking in the aftermath of the FAA’s annual forecast that projects a 2.8 percent per year increase in Revenue Passenger Miles (RPM) from 2014 to 2034. U.S. airline RPMs in 2034 are expected to be approximately 76 percent higher than the 2013 level. According to the forecast, the total number of people flying on U.S. airlines will increase by 0.8 percent from 2013 levels to 745.5 million in 2014, and grow to 1.15 billion in 2034.

“With healthy growth projected in air travel, the FAA has a tremendous opportunity to make a major difference in the industry,” FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta said. “As the system becomes more complex, we’ll look to new technologies to meet the growing demand for safe and efficient air travel here at home and around the world.”

But can the nation’s carriers and airports handle it?

Huerta did outline four key initiatives the FAA will pursue, including “Rebalancing existing services and modernizing our infrastructure, including advancing NextGen, to reduce costs and become more efficient in the long run, as we safely integrate new types of users into the nation’s airspace.”

NextGen is an umbrella term the FAA uses for the ongoing transformation of the National Airspace System (NAS). At its most basic level, NextGen represents an evolution from a ground-based system of air traffic control to a satellite-based system of air traffic management, which the FAA says is vital to meeting future demand, and to avoiding gridlock in the sky and at the nation's airports.

But Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, says the FAA is understating that air travel infrastructure is woefully under-resourced to cope with the demand that already exists.

“More net travelers are obviously terrific for the U.S. economy,” Dow said, “but those who travel frequently are thinking about what our flying experiences are already like on a day-to-day basis, and greeting the FAA report with very mixed feelings.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the Obama administration recognizes the role aviation plays in the U.S. economy, and they are working on the infrastructure issue.

“The aviation forecast is strong and we predict the use of our airports and airplanes will only rise, which is why we are committed to investing in aviation and taking the steps necessary to maintain improvement in the industry,” Foxx said.

Dow said he can only hope the opposite isn’t true – that as more people travel and suffer bad experiences, they opt not to travel again in the future.

“Unless we make the necessary investments in our infrastructure, this projected travel demand will not fully materialize, and the missed opportunity for the U.S. economy will be tragic,” he said. “Our policymakers need to explore every funding avenue to make sure that our infrastructure keeps pace and the country realizes the full benefit of these upward travel trends for entrepreneurship, job creation and tax revenues.”

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